Let the Dream Descend
by N.S.L. Jewelles
Summary: What if Christine chose not to leave with Raoul and chose the Phantom? Based on ALW's musical. OneShot EC with some RC at the end.


His hands are cold as he throws her to the floor of his lair. The once-beautiful wedding dress is ripped as she falls. "Why, you ask, was I bound and chained in this cold and dismal place?" She tries to speak but is drowned out by his voice that had once, long ago, called to her from the opera house catacombs, a sweet, seductive, glorious voice. "Not for any mortal sin, but the wickedness of my abhorrent face!" Tears cross her cheeks as she looks upon him, pointing at his own mutilation with a shaking hand.

From the opera house above, she hears the voices of the mob, descending towards them. "Track down this murderer! He must be found!"

He lifts her from the ground and shoves her against a wall. "Hounded out by everyone; met with hatred everywhere! No kind words from anyone; no compassion anywhere! Christine," he whispers despairingly into the darkness. His breath is heavy and shaken. "Why?" he asks, then more forcefully. "Why?"

There is Madame's voice in the darkness, followed by Raoul's, her lover's. "Keep your hand at the level of your eyes…" She looks at the man before her, the infamous Opera Ghost, with new anger.

"Have you gorged yourself at last in your lust for blood?" He gazes up at her, catching her eyes with his own piercing ones. "Am I now to be prey to your lust for flesh?" She shivers, thinking of the chance that she would be forced to love this man, this murderous creature with no care for anything around him but her own voice and stardom.

"This fate which condemns me to wallow in blood," he says fiercely, standing up straight and advancing towards her, "has also denied me the joys of the flesh." His trembling hand touches her pale cheek, wiping some of the tears away. "This face, the inflection, which poisons our love," he murmurs, like maybe she isn't supposed to hear it. "This face which earned a mother's fear and loathing," he adds, touching his own disfigured face with his right hand, his left reaching out for his smooth, pure white mask. "A mask….my first unfeeling scrap of clothing."

She steps away from the wall, walking towards him. He has brought her everything she's wanted; the singing, the stardom, the love she was deprived of, and now he needs her more than she has ever needed him. "Pity comes to late," he says angrily, through gritted teeth, "turn around and face your fate," he turns her to look straight upon him, "an eternity of this," he points viciously to his face, "before your eyes."

She is too sad for tears. This man, who she had once thought to be confident and self-assured, is now on the brink of disaster, holding her hostage for some simple beauty in this dark underworld in which he lives. "This haunted face holds no horror for me now," she says to him, moving a few steps forward to one of the many mirrors in his lair. "It's in your soul where the true distortion lies," she sings, taking his hand and leading him to look at his own reflection.

He looks upon himself for a few moments, and there is a splash behind them. "Wait! I think, my dear, we have a guest!" She turns and almost faints. "Sir!"

"Raoul!" she can't help but cry out to him.

"This is indeed an unparalleled delight!" He advances toward the form of her lover standing by the archway into the lair, the archway that has just been sealed by an iron gate. "I had rather hoped that you would come and now my wish comes true; you have truly made my night!"

"Free her! Do what you like, only free her! Have you no pity?" Raoul cries out to her and tears tumble from her eyes, sparkling on her cheeks in the soft candlelight.

The man turns to her, his distorted face creased in a sly grin that scares her. "Your lover makes a passionate plea." She looks to Raoul. He stares at her with his fierce blue eyes, glazed over in his longing for her.

In desperation, she cries to him. "Please, Raoul, it's useless!"

Angry now, Raoul shouts to the man who stands between him and his love. "I love her! Does that mean nothing? I love her! Show some compassion!"

"The world showed no compassion to me!" the man snarls, sounding more like a ravenous beast than anything. She puts her hand on the side of his organ, trying to keep from falling over in fright.

"Christine," Raoul shouts to her, "Christine!" Then to the man, "Let me see her!" The man grins devilishly, making her shiver, then moves aside, revealing her in her weak position by his instrument.

"Be my guest, sir," he waves a hand at her, and Raoul makes not a move. Why, she does not know. "Monsieur, I bid you welcome. Did you think that I would harm her?" He acknowledges her, the woman these two men fight over. He starts towards Raoul, standing alone in the darkness, his image reflecting off of the murky water. "Why would I make her pay," he says, the words slithering off of his tongue like poisonous snakes, smooth but wicked, "for the sins which are yours?" He shouts as he throws a noose around Raoul's neck. All she can do is watch; her voice is choked and quiet.

"Order your fine horses now! Raise up your hand to the level of your eyes! Nothing can save you now except, perhaps," he shouts as he turns to her, and she feels a sudden awful chill, "Christine!" She stands as he calls to her, like it is a summoning, but she fears what he'll say, fears what he'll do to Raoul, to her… "Start a new life with me! Buy his freedom with your love! Refuse me and you send your lover to his death! This is the choice! This is the point of no return!" The words of the song he wrote for her, a song of passion and lust and intense feeling resonate in her ears.

She bothers not to hike up her skirts- the dress is already in disrepair from being tripped upon and kept in a musty underground lair- as she descends into the water. It chills her ankles and she stops a few paces from the Phantom and her lover. Angrily, she says to the tall dark figure she once loved, "The tears I might have shed for your dark fate grow cold and turn to tears of hate!" She shouts viciously at him.

"Christine, forgive me, please forgive me," she hears Raoul's voice shoot through her ears, his words tired and pained. "I did it all for you and all for nothing!"

Singing softly to herself, she sings into the night, "Farewell fallen idol and false friend! One by one I've watched illusions shattered!" The Phantom's voice, once beautiful, once majestic, floats through his lair. She thinks of it like poisonous gas; it looks like air but strikes like poison.

He sings to the tune of his own opera, one that she'd fought to sing in. "Past all hope of cries for help, no point in fighting! For either way you choose, you cannot win!" he shouts to her, and his voice is joined by Raoul's.

"Either way you choose he has to win!"

A wicked smirk crosses the Phantom's face. "So do you end your days with me, or do you send him to his grave?" He tightens the noose on Raoul's neck and she yelps in pain for him.

"Why make her lie to you to save me?" Raoul shouts angrily at the man standing between the two of them, the man that has reduced the fabric of their lives, their love, to tatters. In a last ditch attempt to save her life from ruin, her lover screams to her, "For pity's sake, Christine, say no! Don't throw away your life for my sake! I've fought so hard to free you!"

The Phantom joins him, more of his own love song piercing the darkness of the opera house catacombs. "Past the point of no return, the final threshold; his life is now the prize which you must earn. You've passed the point of no return."

Crying now, weeping even, she screams at the Phantom, "Angel of Music, why this torment? When will you find reason? Angel of Music…" she trails off as the two men who have shaped her life so dramatically stare at her, one pleading the other sneering. "You deceived me." She makes a move towards the Phantom, her eyes wild with anger, her dark curls strewn across her shoulders. "I gave you my mind blindly!"

"You try my patience," the Phantom replies, pulling a little on the noose. "Make your choice!" She looks at him, his disfigured face glowing in the light from many candles. Not one day in his life has he felt love. She looks at the form of her lover, limp from fighting the rope around his neck. He has given love to her and she has returned it. He does not deserve to die, and the Phantom does not deserve to live in loneliness. But if she chose that path, what would life hold for her? To be a slave to a man who she assumes truly loves her. But she'd save Raoul's life.

Swallowing hard, she chants softly, "Pitiful creature of darkness- what kind of life have you known? God give me courage to show you; you are not alone!" She nearly runs to him, the water and dress weighing her down. Her small mouth touches the Phantom's and she pushes herself against him. Two mouths that extol voices like none other; she thinks what together they could create.

She backs down when he begins to fall backwards from her weight on him, though it is not much. His eyes flood over and for the first time she hears him sniffle; the Opera Ghost sheds tears. There are drumbeats up above; the mob draws ever closer. "Track down this murderer! He must be found! Hunt down this animal who runs the ground!"

"Take her! Forget me! Forget all of this!" the Phantom shouts, letting go of the rope. Raoul falls to the floor, and she runs to him. "Leave me alone! Forget all you've seen!" He covers his face in his hands and begins to run up to his lair as she helps Raoul from the rope. He clings to her helplessly, then begins to stand. "Go now! Don't let them find you!" He steps up onto dry land as she helps Raoul to his feet. "Take the boat, swear to me never to tell the secrets you know of the angel in Hell!" She helps Raoul into the boat and then looks after the Phantom, who begins to shout. "Go now! Go now and leave me!"

"No!" she hears herself shouting.

"Christine!" Raoul's voice trails behind her from the Phantom's gondola as she runs back to the Opera Ghost's lair. He turns as she trips on a rock, but he catches her, placing her back on her feet. She's very aware of his hand on her waist. It seems more awkward now, even more awkward than in _Don Juan_.

"Let me stay."

"What?" Raoul and the Phantom shout together.

"I want to stay here."

"You…" the Phantom says, but she puts a finger to his lips.

"I want to stay here with you." She cranes her neck up to reach him, but he is faster, crushing his lips to hers. The setting falls away, leaving just her and the Phantom in their own little bubble of love and desire. She wants to stay there for hours, forever, but there is a sudden bang and the Phantom cripples away from here. There is blood spurting out of a gunshot in chest, the bullet having been expertly shot so as to avoid her.

She turns around as the Phantom falls to the dirt floor, and she sees a dozen armed guards at the gate, Raoul staring at her. "Christine, are you safe?" She doesn't respond, falling to the ground beside the Phantom. "Christine!"

"Christine," the Phantom whispers, his right hand quivering as it touches her smooth, tearstained cheek. She takes his other hand in both of her own. "Christine, I love you," he sings to her, and she fears that it is the last time she will hear that perfect voice.

"No, don't leave me. Please, don't go."

"My angel," he murmurs to her, sitting up as best he can. "I will never truly leave you." He kisses her again, softly.

"Don't go…"

"You alone can make my song take flight," he chants quietly, his breath failing, "it's over now, the music of the night." With that, he falls to the ground.

"No!" She wakes up covered in cold sweat. It was all a dream. She looks to her side; Raoul is sleeping, his breathing soft. The memories of that night ring softly in her mind, and she is glad that she left with Raoul before the Phantom could be hurt. Then why was she having this dream?

"Christine," Raoul shifts beside her, groaning softly. "Go back to sleep."

"I will soon, dear," she replies, and falls back onto her pillows, humming softly to herself. _You alone can make my song take flight. It's over now, the music of the night_…


End file.
